The Perils of Parenting

It is incredibly difficult to a be a parent in this day and age.

There are so many things out there to distract your child and put them on the wrong path. 

It is not easy instilling the right morals, character and values in your child to confront today's society. You would hope that their school would be an ally in that quest. 

A couple of examples from the headlines this week shows how diligent parents must be in monitoring what is going on at their children's schools.

A 10-year old boy in Tarboro, NC was punished for calling his teacher "ma-am."

The mother of a 10-year-old boy in North Carolina is outraged that her son was recently punished for calling his fifth grade teacher "ma’am.”

“I was in disbelief,” Teretha Wilson, the boy’s mother, told Fox News on Saturday.

Wilson noticed her son, Tamarion, was not himself when she picked him up from the bus stop earlier this week.

“I asked him what was wrong, and he told me he got in trouble for saying 'ma’am' to a teacher. I was confused,” she said.

The next afternoon, Wilson went to the school to meet with Tamarion’s teacher and the school's principal. With her she brought a separate piece of paper on which her son had written the definition of ma’am. (According to the Oxford Dictionaries, ma’am is defined as “a term of respectful or polite address used for a woman”).

Wilson claims Tamarion’s teacher told her that her son “was getting on her nerve when he called her ma’am" but “couldn’t give me a reason of why that was bad.” The teacher also claimed Tamarion knew that she wasn’t serious when she allegedly threatened to throw something at him, Wilson said.

So much for Southern manners.

It appears that patriotism and allegiance to the flag is also threatened in the South. And here I thought it was just with NFL players.

An Atlanta neighborhood charter school principal announced at the beginning of the school year that students would no longer recite the Pledge of Allegiance. She explained it to parents as “an effort to begin our day as a fully inclusive and connected community.”

That's weird. I thought that was exactly what reciting the Pledge of Allegiance was supposed to do. Doesn't the pledge explicitly state that we are all connected together by our country and God and we cannot be divided? Doesn't it state we all pledge allegiance the principles of liberty and justice for all?  How much more inclusive and connected  can you get?

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

“Over the past couple of years it has become increasingly obvious that more and more of our community were choosing to not stand and/or recite the pledge,” she wrote, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

“Teachers and the K-5 leadership team will be working with students to create a school pledge that we can say together at morning meeting,” Zelski wrote, adding that it “will focus on students’ civic responsibility to their school family, community, country and our global society.”

I pledge "civic responsibility" to our global society? Notice that the principal also does not suggest the focus be on allegiance to our  country. The "civic responsibility" should be to their country. What country is that if not the United States where they are going to school compliments of the taxpayers?

Fortunately, parents of students at the school were infuriated, and as the decision got media coverage and the attention of state politicians, the principal quickly reversed the course.

Therein lies a lesson for parents according to Janice Shaw Crouse, the author of the book, "Children at Risk".

“I think parents should take heart … in that the administration was forced to change their minds and go back to having the Pledge of Allegiance,” she said. “And I think parents can learn from this that they do need to speak out, and they do need to know what’s going on so that they can speak out.”

To make matters worse, last week brought news of a Pennsylvania grand jury report that alleges child sexual abuse involving more than 300 "predator priests" in six dioceses in the state. Many of the priests were well known to the Catholic Church hierarchy but were actively involved in covering up the abuse.

This is just another in a long string of such cases that we have heard about in recent years. It has been reported that the Catholic Church in the United States has paid out $3.8 billion in lawsuits and claims since the 1980's involving sexual abuse.

There is even a credible report out today from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano (the Vatican's former ambassador to Washington, D.C.) that Pope Francis himself has been complicit in looking the other way regarding at least one Cardinal that was found to have engaged in child abuse. Vigano has asked for the Pope to resign.

This has reached the point that it seems that the Catholic Church has serious fundamental problems within the culture of its clergy. It also raises serious questions about the entire leadership of the church. Vigano calls it an "infected swamp". Does that sound familiar?

It would appear that the only solution is fundamental change and that probably will only occur if loyal Catholic parishioners demand that change.

In the meantime, parenting is perilous. The institutions that we have traditionally relied on to help guide our children's morals, character and values are unreliable.

We were told by Hillary Clinton that it takes a village to raise a child. Unfortunately, it appears we can't trust the village to help.